7 articles to help you do a mixed-methods thesis

Anita Morris is a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, working on children and family violence. At a workshop I was running last year, we ran into the challenge of how to analyse qualitative and quantitative research especially for your literature review and methodology–particularly if you were from a health or science background. Anita had the answer (via her supervisor Prof. Cathy Humphreys), and she kindly later sent through this reading list. She’s been even kinder now, and let me share the list with you. Thanks Anita!

M. Sandelowskia, C. I. Voilsb and J. Barroso, ‘Comparability work and the management of difference in research synthesis studies’ in Social Science & Medicine, (2007) 64, 236–247.

Among the most significant recent developments in the academic and clinical enterprise known as evidence-based healthcare is the call to researchers to be more methodologically inclusive and tolerant of methodological diversity in conducting the systematic reviews at the heart of this practice. (p. 236)

Although, historically, qualitative research has not enjoyed the same degree of acceptability as quantitative research, the situation is changing. With the greater acceptance of qualitative methods have come calls for appropriate methodologies for synthesising the results of qualitative studies. (p. 209)

Stern and Harris (1985) were the first to coin the phrase ‘qualitative meta-synthesis’ with reference to the amalgamation of a group of qualitative studies. Their aim was the development of an explanatory theory or model which could explain the findings of a group of similar qualitative studies. (p. 204).